The Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960-1996. The thirty-six-year civil war began as a grassroots, popular movement to the rightist and military usurpation of civil government (state and public institutions). In 1944, the "October Revolutionaries" assumed government and instituted liberal economic reform benefiting and politically strengthening the civil and labor rights of the urban working class and the peasants. Elsewhere, a group of leftist st...
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The Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960-1996. The thirty-six-year civil war began as a grassroots, popular movement to the rightist and military usurpation of civil government (state and public institutions). In 1944, the "October Revolutionaries" assumed government and instituted liberal economic reform benefiting and politically strengthening the civil and labor rights of the urban working class and the peasants. Elsewhere, a group of leftist students, professionals, and liberal-democratic government coalitions were led by Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.
In consequence, the U.S. government ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to launch Operation PBSUCCESS (1953–54) and halt Guatemala's “communist revolt", as perceived by the corporate fruit companies such as United Fruit and the U.S. State Department. The CIA chose right-wing Guatemalan Army Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas to lead an "insurrection" in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. Upon deposing the Árbenz Guzmán...
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